by Danny Haiphong

A courageous, overwhelmingly non-white bus drivers union is locked in struggle with the multinational Veolia corporation, a classic plunderer whose goal is to “dismember the most radical union in the city.” USW Local 8751 not only fights for children’s safety and a decent wage, “the leadership has fought for the self-determination of oppressed people all over the globe since the union's inception.”

New Youth Party Demands West Finance Ebola Fight

Events in Ferguson, Missouri, have inspired formation of “an alternative party of young people of color” in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. In its first major demonstration, set for October 16, the Young people’s Freedom and Justice Party is “demanding that the U.S. government and the western world provide the funding for drugs for treatment” of Ebola “and that they move with all deliberate speed,” said Sara Osman, one of the organizers. The party is comprised of college and high school students as well as youths who are not in school.

Black Is Back Coalition to March on White House November 1

In November, 2009, President Obama’s first year in office, the newly formed Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations held its first rally and march on the White House. “I think, five years later, even the most die-hard Obamites would have a serious problem trying to ignore the criminality of this regime, or to separate what the United States government is doing under Obama from anything it’s done under George W. Bush or any of the other criminals who have occupied that office,” said Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela. The Coalition holds a rally and march on the White House on November 1, followed by a teach-in at Howard University the next day under the theme “Peace Through Revolution.”

U.S. Intelligence Agencies Were Aware of ISIS’s Plans

Far from being in the dark about ISIS’s capabilities and goals, the CIA was well aware of the jihadist’s plans to attack the Iraqi city of Mosul and seize much of the country, according to journalist Nafeez Ahmed, author of the Guardian newspaper article “How the West Created the Islamic State.” The U.S., Britain and the Gulf oil monarchies were plotting regime change in Syria even before the outbreak of demonstrations against the government, in 2011. The same countries that have been “supporting and financing and manipulating” Islamist militants are now “being mobilized to fight the very enemy they created,” said Ahmed, author of Zero Point, a novel that actually predicted the events now unfolding in Iraq.

Washington’s Incessant Lies

U.S. foreign policy seems full of contradictions because “they are at war with the world and have to constantly hide their aims and their goals, and can turn on the very forces that they create,” said Sara Flounders, of the International Action Center. But, said Flounders, “what they’re telling the people of the world is always a lie. Always.”

Rally Makes Connection Between African American and Palestinian Struggles

On October 11, hundreds will gather at the Malcolm X and Betty Shabbaz Center, in Harlem, to affirm their solidarity with Palestinians under the Israeli apartheid regime. “The World Stands with Palestine” rally will highlight parallels in the plight of Blacks in the U.S. and Palestinians under occupation. The Center is housed on the site of Malcolm X’s assassination, in 1965. “Malcolm would have been an African internationalist,” said hip hop artist and activist M-1. “To have the rally in the former Audubon Ballroom completes the cycle.”

Black Politicians Silent and Ineffectual: Throw Them Out

One looks at the images from Ferguson “and sees in an instant that there is a war against Black people,” said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. What are Black politicians doing? “Many, if not most, have been silent,” said Abu Jamal, in a report for Prison Radio. “A new, militant, responsive politics must arise, built by the young who are clear-eyed and committed.”

Detroit: Water Cut-Offs Lead to Evictions

Pastor Ray Anderson, of the House of Help church and community center, joined with the grassroots Water Brigade to halt the water cut-offs that have affected hundreds of thousands. Before long, the city cut off the House of Help’s water, too. “A lot of people are losing their homes when their house goes into foreclosure because of the water bill,” said Pastor Anderson. “I believe it’s a God-given right for us to have water,” especially since Detroit sits on the Great Lakes, the greatest reservoir of fresh water in the world.

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Click here to download the show. Length: One hour.

Despite its constant and relentless celebrations of our people's historic Freedom Movement, the CBC's claim to stand for the interests of African Americans is an empty brand, for lease to whichever corporate donor willing to pay the price. Demand that the CBC revoke its deal with the devil and stand against apartheid and ethnocracy in Israel, and side with the people over the telecoms by embracing network neutrality, the reclassification of broadband internet to a public utility available to all without corporate toll booths, or so-called fast and slow "lanes".

by Raymond Nat Turner

Working people of Ferguson are still standing tall against
Judas Quisling Steppin’ Fetchit house Negroz telling them to
“Get off the streets,” “Go home, “ “Go back to sleep, watching
Oprah, Ellen, reruns of ‘Roots’”

by Bryan K. Bullock

Today's silence by black leaders in the face of Israeli aggression against Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip stands in stark contrast to the historic support of the Palestinians by African and African-American leaders.

Why is Cornel West the only black face recognizable to US TV audiences with the integrity to speak against Israeli apartheid & our role in sustaining it?

While the Congressional Black Caucus was co-signing Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, Dr. Cornel West spoke against Israeli apartheid. But where is our prosperous & powerful black political class? Where is the black church?

The Real News Network: Inside Israel's Racist Ethnocracy

The Real News Network and Max Blumental, author of "Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel" look at how Israeli politicians have made racist anti-Arab hatred and fascism a political staple in the zionist state.

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

The contradiction between the supposed origin of our black political class out of the struggle against Jim Crow and its collaboration with Israeli apartheid can't be resolved. We can only save the good name of our own people by calling out the black US collaborators with apartheid, holding them up to derision and ridicule, by sustaining a storm of disapproval and opprobrium until they and the ethnocratic regime in Israel are no more.

by Danny Haiphong

“Both the corporate ruling class on one side and much of the proclaimed ‘left’ on the other are caught up in fact-manipulation.” For differing reasons, neither tells the truth about Zionism’s mission to create a ‘Greater Israel’; of U.S. and Israeli support for jihadists such ISIS – which claimed credit for killing the three teenage Jewish settlers; or U.S. schemes to contain China and foment war against Russia.

by Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III

President Obama has turned his back on his 2009 promises to the Palestinian people, and instead ratcheted up support for Israeli wars, bigotry and racism. “The NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, and other organizations should be front-and-center in condemning the Israeli government’s actions and the Obama administration’s support and encouragement of them.”

by Solomon Comissiong

Black and genuinely progressive Americans should be in righteous motion against Israel’s murderous attack on Gaza. “If you were against Apartheid in places like South Africa or Zimbabwe, then you must stand against Apartheid in Israel/Palestine.” But then, the United States, like Israel, “ is ultimately a white settler nation.”

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

How did the NAACP wrap up its national conference this weekend without saying a mumbling word about the genocidal bombing of Gaza? Why did Moral Monday's Rev. Barber appear on HBO's Real Time with notorious Islamaphobe Bill Maher and not speak to the morality of apartheid in Israel? Why are the black political class and the black church, invisible on the invasion of Gaza and the fact of Israeli ethnocracy in general?

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

The deeper the U.S. slips into economic decline, the higher it ratchets up the pace and stakes of armed conflict. Washington appears to have crossed some kind of Rubicon, to embark “on a mad, scorched earth policy to terrorize the planet into submission through relentless escalation into a global state of war.”

“We all know that Obama and [Attorney General] Holder can move this with the stroke of a pen,” said Ralph Poynter, husband of people’s lawyer Lynn Stewart, whose Stage Four breast cancer worsens by the day in a Fort Worth, Texas, federal prison facility. A request for Stewart’s compassionate release from a ten-year prison sentence has stalled at the desk of Federal Bureau of Prisons director Charles Samuels. Asked how long he would maintain his vigil in front of the White House, Poynter replied, “I will be in Washington until Lynne is free or dead.”

Rich Men’s Fears Drive U.S. Hyper-Surveillance

The wealthy classes that rule the country “are very scared of the fact that the average American citizen may rise up and rebel against the redistribution of wealth to the top,” said Dr. Johnny Williams, professor of sociology at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. “The surveillance state isn’t creeping, anymore. It’s here.”

Obama Defiles Democracy

All-pervasive spying on the citizenry “is one more thing that we can add to the list of offenses that Obama has committed against every assumption of democracy and democratic rights,” said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition. The revelations follow on the heels of the administration’s doubling of the bounty on Black liberation movement exile Assata Shakur. “That means anybody who supports Assata Shakur can be charged with supporting terrorism,” said Yeshitela. “I don’t think a white president could have gotten away with that.”

“Humanitarian” Imperialism

Ajamu Baraka, an Institute for Policy Studies fellow and co-founder of the U.S. Human Rights Network, said “the U.S. strategic objectives in the Middle East is to prevent any effective opposition to its interests in the region.” In an interview with Kali-Ahset Amen, host of Atlanta radio station WRFG’s “Moving the Center” program, Baraka described the doctrine of “humanitarian” military intervention as part of “desperate attempt on the part of the U.S. and the West to maintain their global hegemony” through force of arms.

Richmond’s Slave Origins Deserve Preservation

Shockoe Bottom, the historic center of old Richmond, Virginia, and site of what was once the nation’s second largest slave market, should not be replaced by a shopping mall, said human rights activist and journalist Anna Edwards. “Shockoe Bottom is the birthplace of the city of Richmond,” said Edwards, an editor of Defenders for Freedom, Justice and Equality newspaper. Richmond, “like so many cities in the United States, was born out of slave societies.”

African Americans Should Show Some Humility, Says Scholar

Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African American studies at the University of Houston, had a quick response to African Americans who might ask, “What have the Palestinians ever done for us?” The Palestinians “did a much better job than many of these Africans in North America in terms of lobbying on behalf of African liberation,” Horne told Norman Richmond, host of Regency Radio’s Saturday Morning Show, in Toronto, Canada. Blacks in America “should really have a bit more humility.”

Jewish Ethiopian women were given contraceptive injections before immigrating to Israel and after arrival. The result: a 50 percent decline in birthrate, and a ‘missing generation’ of Ethiopian children.”

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Most of the world supported the struggle of African Americans against Jim Crow during the Freedom Movement. Most of the progressive black leadership in this country spoke out against the apartheid regime, advocating boycotts, divestment, sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Where are they today on apartheid Israel?

The race riots in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem pointed up the virulently anti-Black nature of Israeli prejudice. Carrying sticks and stones, the crowds shouted “Blacks Out!” and “Infiltrators get out of our homes.” A veteran reporter said only a strong police presence prevented lynchings. Some of the hate speech sounded quite “American” – such as the Interior Minister’s statement that Israel belongs to “the white man.”

Wealthy Americans whose paramount issue is unlimited support for Israel create huge distortions in U.S. politics, bending presidents to their will. Barack Obama’s career has long been nurtured by one such billionaire hyper-Zionist, who hopes to instigate an attack on Iran.

Terrified of offending the Israel lobby, Black congresspersons routinely vote for anti-Palestinian resolutions as “if they represented some Arab-hating constituency in Utah.” Two Black Representatives – Barbara Lee (CA) and Keith Ellison (MN) – last week dared to ask President Obama to support lifting Israel's blockade of Gaza and an investigation into last week's savage attack on the aid flotilla – but were careful to note they did not speak for the Congressional Black Caucus as a body.

This weekend, heavily armed Israeli military forces intercepted a flotilla bearing relief supplies for Gaza in international waters. The intention of the crew and passengers, who hail from more than a dozen countries and include a number of Israeli Jews, was to run the more than three year old blockade of food, trade goods, medical supplies and construction materials to the 1.5 million people of Gaza, the world's largest open air prison, to force US corporate media to cover the slow motion starvation imposed upon Gaza by the US and its client state of Israel, and ultimately to end the siege.

In the mid-70s, the world’s two pariah states, Israel and South Africa, sought to seal their relationship with a nuclear kiss. A new book claims Israel tried to sell South Africa nuclear-tipped missiles – the price was too high. Israel denies the charge, but Tel Aviv has never told the truth about its atomic arsenal and activities, so why should anyone believe them.

by Jonathan Cook

It is irrefutable that Israel is an apartheid state, established and maintained for the benefit of one group of its inhabitants. “There are, for example, some 30 laws that explicitly discriminate between Jews and non-Jews.” The same fate awaits the West Bank, if the Zionist mission is not halted. “The veiled apartheid facing Palestinians inside Israel is the blueprint for a veiled -- and more legitimate -- kind of apartheid being planned for Palestinians in the occupied territories.”

The Zionist project, the Israeli mission of occupation, ethnic cleansing, expropriation and colonial resettlement of Arab Palestine is untenable, and cannot succeed even in the short run. Just as in apartheid South Africa, Israel's native subcontractors cannot keep the natives in order, forcing that apartheid state to endlessly escalate the violence against the nation's indigenous population. Nobody can predict the future, Abunimah reminds us, but the darkest and bloodiest deeds of racist South Africa occurred when its imminent fall could not be admitted by its leaders.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is a wanted man in some places, and decidedly unwanted in some others. Olmert sat in the Big Chair during last year's murderous Israeli assault on a million largely defenseless Palestinians in Gaza, the world's largest open air prison. As a result, prosecutors in the UK and elsewhere are reportedly drawing up charges of crimes against humanity and preparing to arrest him if he is ever careless enough to set foot in their jurisdictions. When Olmert showed up for a speech at the University of Chicago, locals were unable to apprehend the fugitive, so they did the next best thing. While a couple hundred protested outside the venue, more than a dozen inside the event, as the felon began to speak, rose to interrupt and challenge him. Electronic Intifada's Ali Abunimah was among them.

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Israel reacted with typical feigned outrage at the United Nations report on war crimes and human rights violations committed by its forces in Gaza, last winter. The Jewish state's serial violations of international law are rooted in the barbarism of its governing principle, apartheid, which leads Israel to place itself “above the accepted norms of civilized behavior.”

Former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has just returned from an Israeli jail where she was briefly imprisoned, along with human rights activists from several nations, for her second attempt at publicly running the brutal US-Israeli blockade trying to bring coloring books, food and medical supplies. Why are the US and Israel imposing this collective punishment upon 1.5 million civilians. How does McKinney's stand match up against that of our first black president, the most powerful man in the world who calls it a "humantarian crisis" but will do nothing about it? And how do they both stack up against the legacy of Dr. King?

President Obama, if he were truly "the humanitarian he pretends to be, would be upholding the Geneva Convention, and condemning the State of Israel before the world." But of course, he won't, and America's "so-called ‘war on terror, which President Obama embraced in the opening lines of his inaugural speech, knows neither humility or shame." Most of Black America mistakenly anticipates some sort of imperial exceptionalism in the Obama White House. But "despite the election of a black man to the presidency, the dictatorship of race and class remains at the core of both U.S. and western ideology and practice."

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